


i swear

by rainbowsandgucci



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: (sadly), Canon Compliant, Everyone but Stan is just mentioned, F/M, Friendship, Fuck Stephen King, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 09:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowsandgucci/pseuds/rainbowsandgucci
Summary: As Mike had spoken, everything had come flooding back.1989. Summer. Bandages. His friends. Cuts on their hands.A promise.Bill.Stan sucks in a breath, closing his eyes as he does.Bill. How could he have forgotten Bill?How could he have forgotten any of them, for that matter.





	i swear

**Author's Note:**

> so i wrote this in the span of about an hour? because i was listening to the it chapter 2 soundtrack and got REALLY caught up in my feels. you're welcome

How many times has Stan sat behind this desk?

How many times has he settled down, a mug of coffee in one hand and his favorite pen in the other, ready to tackle whatever task he’s set himself for the day? 

He’s not sure, though he could probably estimate, but really, it’s not important. He’s stalling, he knows himself well enough to admit that, so no, the number of times he’s sat behind this desk isn’t important.

What it _is_ though, is the last time he’ll ever sit here.

That’s important.

Finally, he reaches for his stationary. 

Surprisingly, his hands are still. They’d been trembling, just hours earlier, as soon as he’d remembered.

Remembered Mike, whose voice was in his ear, absolutely _jarring_ because it was nothing like he remembered and yet, exactly like he remembered. Or, well, _just _remembered.

As Mike had spoken, everything had come flooding back. 

1989\. Summer. Bandages. His friends. Cuts on their hands.

A promise.

Bill.

Stan sucks in a breath, closing his eyes as he does. _Bill_. How could he have forgotten Bill?

How could he have forgotten any of them, for that matter. 

Bill, their strong, fearless leader. Strong because of his friends, fearless because they needed him to be. 

Bev, with her sharp tongue, wit, and careful air of _I don’t care_ that was clearly there to hide how much she _did_ care, so much, about all of them.

Ben, sweet Ben, always willing to go out of his way to _help_, to make things easier for everyone else in any way he could. Even if it meant that his crush on Bev was overlooked.

Mike, always so _gentle_, never wanting anyone to get hurt, whether it be physically or emotionally. Mike, who _stayed_, and had to be the one to make these phonecalls that would inevitably end in so much hurt. Stan’s heart _aches_.

Eddie, brave and absolutely lion-hearted wherever his friends were concerned. Always the first one to voice displeasure with all of their adventures, but always, _always_ the one to patch up whatever bumps and scrapes they managed to collect along the way.

Richie. _Trashmouth_, Stan’s mind yells at him, and he has to smile. Richie was, no, _is_ his best friend. Always there when Stan needed someone to just _listen_ to him, or when he needed a shoulder to cry on. His jokes were pretty funny too, something Stan is pretty sure he never would’ve admitted thirty years ago. But they were.

Stan knows exactly what he’s going to write from the moment he picks up his pen. Or, well, he has an idea anyway. Actually writing though? That’s the hard part.

He wonders if it’s this hard for Bill to get his words out, or if it’s just because he knows what’s going to happen as soon as he gets the last word out.

_“Dear Losers,”_ he starts with. It feels right to start each of them that way. Feels better than anything else would, even their names don’t feel right, because they’re Losers, always have been, first and foremost. 

_“I know what this must seem like, but this is not a suicide note. You’re probably wondering why I did what I did. It’s because I knew I was too scared to go back. And if we weren’t together, if all of us alive weren’t united, I knew we’d all die so, I made the only logical move. I took myself off the board.”_

As he writes the last sentence, he suddenly remembers chess. Remembers learning to play. He’d been sixteen, stressed out of his _mind_ because of school. Richie had come over one day with a chess board under his arm, the game pieces thrown haphazardly into his backpack as he rambled on and on about how Stan needed something to get his mind off of things, and since he _clearly_ wasn’t getting lucky then chess it was.

That was the thing about Richie, the thing Stan remembers the clearest and with the most fondness. He always somehow knew what his friends needed, without having to be told. Whether it was Bill needing a bike ride through the woods to get his mind off of Georgie, or Mike needing someone to drag him off the farm to play video games at the arcade for awhile, just so he had some _fun_ for once in his, as Richie would always say, ‘sheltered, pornless, homeschooled life’. 

_“Did it work?”_ He hopes it works. God he hopes it works. _“If you’re reading this, you know the answer. I lived my whole life afraid. Afraid of what would come next, afraid of what I might leave behind. Don’t. Be who you want to be. Follow your own path, wherever that takes you. Think of this letter as a promise, a promise I’m asking you to make. To me. To each other. An oath. See, the thing about being a loser is you don’t have anything to lose. So be true. Be brave. Stand. Believe. And don’t ever forget, we’re losers and we always will be.”_

He reads his words over a few times, then nods. It’s good. It’s short, to the point, just like he likes. 

The first one, he sets aside, puts it on top of an envelope already neatly addressed to Bill. Copies it, and sets that one aside with another envelope, this one for Mike. The next one, in his head already for Bev, makes him pause.

He’d searched all of his friends up, after talking to Mike. He knows they’re all separated, knows they’ve all forgotten each other, just like he had. Again, his heart aches, because they didn’t _deserve_ that. 

Ben and Beverly? Deserved to remember each other. They deserved to go to prom together, deserved to date as they went to college, getting engaged shortly after graduating and then getting married not much later, with the rest of the losers there to celebrate with them. 

Instead, Ben it seems, has stayed single, lonely as ever. Meanwhile, Bev’s love life, as high profile as she and her husband are, seems to be riddled with as much controversy as any celebrity’s relationships are. 

In his searches, Stan sees one article speculating about her husband’s supposed abusive tendencies, and, remembering her dad and knowing just how _twisted_ that stupid clown’s sense of humor is, he closes the tab and shuts his eyes and tries not to cry.

He’s being hopeful, maybe even a little bit of an optimist for once in his life, when he addresses the next letter to both Ben and Bev, Ben’s address below them.

His next letter doesn’t make him pause, because he already knows what he’s doing.

Just like Bev and Ben, Richie and Eddie had always been something that Stan’s sure was _supposed_ to happen. Hell, the first day they’d met, when seven year old Eddie had cautiously approached Richie and asked him to _please_ wash his hands, Stan’s pretty sure Richie had been head over heels right there.

The first sign had been that Richie _had_ washed his hands, with absolutely no complaints.

Stan remembers being a little jealous, once they’d hit their teenage years, because Richie was _his_ best friend, yet it seemed like whatever Eddie wanted, Eddie got. Sure, Stan had known he could count on Richie for anything, knew that he was Richie’s best friend too, but he _also_ knew that faced with making Stan happy or making Eddie happy, Richie was going to choose Eddie _every_ time.

The jealousy had only lasted a short time though, because Stan’s not an _idiot_, and it hadn’t taken him long to realize that Richie just. Really fucking loved Eddie.

Not for the first time, even with not remembering everything, Stan thinks, _fuck_ Derry.

Because if things had been just a little different, maybe Richie and Eddie would have stood a fighting chance of getting out and figuring _them_ out.

They hadn’t, though, that much is clear. Eddie’s married to a woman now, if facebook is to be believed, and to almost an _exact_ replica of his horrible mother. In pictures, he looks just as miserable as Stan remembers him looking whenever he’d been with Sonia, and it’s just. It’s not fucking _fair_.

Richie is...well. He’s not married at least. He’s a comedian now, and Stan’s proud, because _yeah_, their Trashmouth always was funny. 

He’s telling jokes about women, though. About hooking up with them and having girlfriends and it’s…

It’s all lies. Stan knows the difference between _Richie’s_ jokes, and whatever the hell these jokes are immediately, and even though he makes them _work_, they’re not his. They’re not the _truth_, nowhere near it.

Like he always has, Richie’s hiding behind jokes about women and his own dick and it’d be comforting, knowing that he hasn’t changed, if it weren’t so damn heartbreaking.

Stan debates a moment, after he writes his letter for the fourth time, then decides, _fuck it_.

_“Be proud_._ And if you find someone worth holding onto, never ever let them go.”_

With a determined nod, he addresses that one to both Richie and Eddie, then puts Richie’s (public) address below that. 

He gathers the envelopes together, in a neat little pile in front of himself, and stares at them for a moment. Then, he drinks the rest of his tea he’d set aside, nearly two hours ago, and, with a fond last glance at the framed picture of he and Patty that’s resting on his desk, he stands.

That’s all taken care of, wrapped up in a neat little bow, and now, he can go.

**Author's Note:**

> continued: and then stan hopped on a plane to derry and helped defeat pennywise and they all lived happily ever after :)


End file.
